


Assassins Tango

by Zara_Zee



Series: Assassins 'verse [2]
Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: A few words appropriated from Grosse Pointe Blank, Assassination, Assassins & Hitmen, M/M, Morally Ambiguous Character, Murder, Torture, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-03
Updated: 2017-11-03
Packaged: 2019-01-28 16:54:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12611112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zara_Zee/pseuds/Zara_Zee
Summary: Assassins Jared Padalecki (aka The Moose, aka Sam Winchester) and Jensen Ackles (aka The Jackal aka Dean Winchester) are now married in their legal names. They’re on honeymoon in Miami, soaking up all the sun, sea, sex and sangria they can manage, when The Firm drops a bomb in their lap. Literally.





	Assassins Tango

**Author's Note:**

> _Written for Livejournal's 2017 J2 Reversebang. I have borrowed the names and faces of certain actors without their knowledge or approval. Not a word of this is true; I've just got them playing parts in my fictional drama. Written for fun, not profit._

 

It’s been a long time since Jensen felt this relaxed.

Ah, Miami. Sun. Sea. Five Star Resorts with poolside bars.

Jensen finishes his Gator Tail Brown Ale and leaves the empty bottle on the table beside his banana lounger. He’s lying under a huge palm leaf beach umbrella wearing nothing but garish Hawaiian-style board shorts (Jared’s idea), aviator sunglasses and a metric tonne of sunscreen.

Jensen’s hair is plastered to his scalp, and he can feel sweat trickling down his back. According to the morning’s weather report, today is supposed to be 91F with 81% humidity. Jensen believes it.

About half an hour ago, Jensen finished the final Sudoku puzzle in the last of six puzzle books that Jared bought for him at the airport. The completed puzzle book is sitting on the table next to him, beside the empty beer bottle. Jensen shifts restlessly. _Relaxed_ will very quickly turn to _bored_ if he doesn’t find something else to occupy his mind soon.    

He watches idly as Jared splashes in the swimming pool like a giant hyperactive seal. Maybe Jensen should take a dip himself? He considers it; licks his lips as his husband launches himself up out of the water and swats a multi-colored beach ball back to the giggling kids at the other end of the pool. Jared’s board shorts (even more garish than Jensen’s) are low-riding and there are droplets of water beading on his torso.

Jensen surreptitiously adjusts himself.

Jensen has always been impressed by just how good Jared is with kids. Back when he’d still thought that his husband was Sam Winchester, owner of Winchester Construction, he’d figured that kids were simply a thing that normal human beings were good at. Now he knows that Jared is actually The Moose, The Firm’s Number Two Assassin, he’s had to re-evaluate that assumption.

Jared says he’s good with kids because he’s used to them. He’s the middle child in a family of five and has hundreds of cousins.

Jensen thinks he’s probably exaggerating about the cousins.

Jensen is not good with kids. Nor is he used to them. He has no idea how to relate to them; how to talk to them. And he certainly has no idea how to play around with them.

Jared says that’s because Jensen is an only child who doesn’t have any cousins. Like, literally, none. 

Also, he was raised by his elderly Great Aunt, because his parents died when he was just a toddler. _Raised_ is probably too generous a word, actually. Great Aunt Ethel shipped him off to Bloomfield Military Academy as a seven day boarder when Jensen was a mere ten years old and there he stayed, even during holidays, until he joined the army at eighteen.

Jensen watches as Jared does laps of the pool, his strong muscled arms powering through the water. He really should join Jared in the pool. Jensen is a good swimmer. He’s actually a pretty good all-round athlete; he’s just not that into ostentatious displays of physical prowess, unlike his husband.

When he’d been in the army Jensen’s General Technical and Physical Training scores were consistently in the top percentile. His psych eval, though, had revealed a certain… _moral flexibility_ …so the powers-that-be trained him as a sniper and then sent him to do RASP 1 training and join the Rangers. From there, he was seconded to a covert black ops team and trained to undertake political assassinations.

It didn’t take long, though, for Jensen to lose faith in government—not just the US government, but the global system of governments in general. Governments, he’d decided, were really just a public relations exercise aimed at fooling the masses into believing there was order and control when in reality a small group of people were systemically plundering the world for their own material gain.

Preemptive Strike Strategy. Taming Unchecked Aggression. Make America Great. All those pithy three word slogans the government-de-jour came up with to convince him that doing their dirty work for them was patriotic…it was all bullshit. And if material gain was the real aim of the game, then why was he settling for a government salary, when the real money was in the private sector?

So Jensen jumped ship and joined The Firm. And he’s honest enough to admit that he has no worthy underlying motive for doing what he does; no honorable higher purpose.  Jensen is trained to kill people; his government used to encourage him to kill people; he’s good at killing people and, truthfully, Jensen likes doing it.

He’s not a psychopath though, despite what some people may have alleged in the past.

Jensen might have been at the end of the line when God handed out empathy and remorse, but psychopaths are incapable of forming deep emotional bonds—and his relationship with Jared definitely constitutes a deep emotional bond.

So Jensen is not a psychopath, but he’s willing to concede that he’s probably a sociopath.

Jared probably is too, but he wasn’t as far down the line when the empathy and remorse were handed out.

Also, Jared’s still trying to kid himself that he’s a good guy. They even had an argument about it, on the second day of their honeymoon. There had been a poolside mid-summer party and they sangria had been world class. They’d both had far too much to drink and Jared had taken offense at some of Jensen’s cynical comments about the world and their place in it. Back in their room, he was obviously spoiling for a fight.

“We get to _choose_ ,” Jared hissed. “We read the dossiers and we can turn the job down if we don’t want it. But come on…if one of us shows up on your doorstep, you did something to bring us there. And you know as well as I do, most of our targets are evil fuckers. Their dossiers read like a demon’s resume. They deserve what they get.”

Jensen doesn’t agree with him and he’d said as much. He never turns down jobs himself because he figures that if someone wants someone dead badly enough to pay The Firm’s fee, then they’re going to end up dead one way or another. If Jensen doesn’t think they actually deserve to die, he makes it quick and painless and he makes sure they don’t see it coming. See? He has empathy.    

Jared though, had continued to insist that when compared to the military in general, it was assassins like them who held the moral high ground.

“We are not indiscriminate,” Jared ranted, waving his arms around effusively. “Pilots carpet bomb entire cities. Drones take out whole villages. We are the real precision strikers. We go in; we take out one person, maybe two; zero collateral damage.”

Jensen stalked up to Jared and jabbed a finger in his chest. “You took out an entire bus, when the only target was Curtis Armstrong. That is not a precisely targeted kill.”

Jared pushed back and loomed over him. “Okay, one? The only people on that bus were Curtis, the driver and two guards. And two, all that RPG did is knock the bus on its side and split it in two. It didn’t kill anybody.”

“And why is that again?” Jensen snarked. “Why did the target not end up dead? Oh that’s right. You fell out of a tree as you were firing the rocket launcher! That was not a carefully targeted, precision operation; it was a clusterfuck!”

The discussion kind of devolved from there, but the angry sex that followed was great.

So was the make-up sex that followed that.

In fact they didn’t leave the room—and barely got out of bed—for the next couple of days. Not until they started to desperately need clean linen.

Jensen adjusts himself again and shifts on the banana lounger as his ass twinges in reminder of their epic sex marathon.

“Excuse me, Sir?”

Jensen manages to stifle the instinct to attack, but he’s rattled that someone got so close to him without him noticing.

He looks up at a pretty waitress with long dark hair and big brown eyes. She’s carrying a drinks tray. Her name tag says ‘Ruby’.

“Yes, Ruby?” he pastes on his most charming smile.

Ruby smiles back, but it doesn’t reach her eyes.

“I’m sorry, I seem to have caught you casually catnapping,” she says. “I’ve brought free cocktails.”

Jensen’s mouth goes dry. Three words beginning with the third letter of the alphabet in the first sentence, a fourth C word and the word ‘free’ in the second. The C’s are the Firm’s verbal contact code for a Thursday, and the word ‘free’ tells Jensen that they want to brief him for a mission.

Fuck.

He checks his cell phone and confirms that it is indeed a Thursday. Still, maybe he’s just being paranoid. Only one way to tell.

“We stayed up late watching X-men re-runs.”

The Firm’s response code for a Thursday, a sentence containing the word ‘late’ and a word starting with the third last letter of the alphabet.

“I can’t criticize you for that,” she replies. “The cast is cool.”

Dammit. Four Cs.

Jensen frowns behind his aviator sunglasses.

Ruby sets down two creamy yellow cocktails, ornately decorated with cherries and pineapple and tiny orange cocktail umbrellas.

“The cocktails are called Explosion by the Beach,” she says. “And there’s one for your husband too. If I may say so, the little umbrellas would look really cute behind your ears. Oh, and there’s a message for you too. The airport has delivered your lost luggage. It’s in your room. Have a nice day, Sir.”

Jensen suppresses a sigh and turns his gaze back to the pool. His husband is leaning against the edge, watching him closely.

Jensen smiles and waves him over, gesturing at the cocktails.

Jared pulls himself out of the water and Jensen takes a moment to appreciate both his upper body strength and his rippling arm muscles.

“What’s going on?” Jared plonks himself down on the banana lounger next to Jensen.

“Caught casually catnapping,” Jensen says succinctly. “Free cocktails.”

Jared’s lips press together. “Seriously?”

“They’re called Explosion by the Beach,” Jensen says and Jared perks up a bit.

Jensen rolls his eyes. “Yeah, it sounds right up your alley.”

“We’re on honeymoon,” Jared reminds him.

“And apparently our lost luggage has been delivered,” Jensen adds.

“Awesome!” Jared grins. “Shall we go check it’s all, uh, as it should be?”

Jensen sighs. “Sure. Just…take the cocktail umbrella with you.”

Back in their room, they remove the micro-earpieces from the underside of the cocktail umbrellas, and Jared opens the suitcase that’s been left on their bed.

“D’oh,” he says. “It’s just a scrambler.”

He switches it on and then they both switch on and insert their ear-pieces.

“This is Sam and Dean,” Jared says.

“Hello boys,” says a familiar British accent.

“The cocktail umbrellas were a douchey touch,” Jensen snarks. “I should’ve known it was you.”

“What’s so urgent you had to bother us on our honeymoon?” Jared adds.

“Oh please,” says Director Sheppard. “Like you’re not jonesing for the chance to blow something up by now.”

Jensen snorts.

Jared looks at him apologetically. “What have you got for us?”

“It’s really more your sort of thing than Dean’s,” Sheppard says. “But apparently you’re only working together now,” he pauses and when neither Jared nor Jensen respond he sighs and continues. “What does the name Christopher Heyerdahl mean to you?”

Jensen feels himself go rigid.

“Uh, dunno,” Jared is saying, but it sounds like he’s speaking from a long way away, underwater. “The name rings a bell though.”

“He’s Black Ops,” Jensen hears himself say and he’s relieved that his voices sounds so normal. “A wet work specialist and master torturer. We worked together.”

“Oh, it was a little more than that, wouldn’t you say?” Sheppard says.

Jared is looking at him now and if his wide-eyed expression is anything to go by he’s picked up on Jensen’s tension.

“He was my mentor,” he tells Jared.

Sheppard huffs in amusement, but Jensen will die before he tells Jared anything about his _relationship_ with Heyerdahl. He’s not being hyperbolic either; Jensen learned how to withstand torture from an expert. And if some of that torture took place in the bedroom, rather than the training room, well, that’s definitely something that Jensen will take to his grave.

“Heyerdahl is very good at what he does,” Jensen adds. “He’s also a psychopath and a sadist.”

Jared is doing that disconcerting thing with his eyes where he looks all compassionate and understanding, as if he’s hearing all the things that Jensen isn’t saying.

They should use Jared’s eyes in the withstanding torture sessions, because there’s only so long Jensen can take of Jared looking at him like that, before he wants to tell him everything.

“Until three days ago,” Sheppard says, “we thought Christopher Heyerdahl was dead.”

This time it’s Jensen’s turn to snort.

“You knew differently?” Sheppard’s tone is cold.

Jensen answers the question with one of his own. “Did you see his dead body?”

There’s a long pause.

“No,” Sheppard finally concedes.

_“Then you should’ve known better than to make that kind of an assumption.”_

Jensen closes his eyes. Oh boy. There was way too much emotion bleeding out of that last statement.

He hears noisy, deliberate movement and then Jared’s arm winds its way slowly around his shoulders.

Jensen opens his eyes and one look at Jared’s face tells him that Heyerdahl just went on his husband’s shit list. Jared doesn’t know what happened between them, but he knows that _something_ did; something that Jensen’s not happy about; and that’s enough for him.

It makes Jensen smile.

“So. Sheppard,” says Jared. “Tell us about this gig.”

Jensen already knew that Heyerdahl had played a little too hard with one of his trainees and had been facing a manslaughter charge and a dishonourable discharge. Apparently he’d killed himself rather than face the consequences of his actions. Jensen’s not surprised to learn that Heyerdahl had actually faked his own death and gone on the run instead.   

“It seems Heyerdahl was taken in by the Pellegrino Crime Family. The oldest son, Mark, to be exact. We were contracted by Lucius Pellegrino. Apparently Heyerdahl has been whispering in Mark Pellegrino’s ear, encouraging him to kill his father and take over the Family. Mark Pellegrino and a group of loyalists have a beachside mansion in Miami. Lucius wants the whole lot of them taken out. He wants to send a strong message about Family loyalty.”

“I thought the mob usually took care of its own business?” Jared says.

“Usually,” Sheppard replies, “but like I said, Lucius is sending a message. He said, and I quote, when you’ve got rats it’s best to send in professional exterminators.”

Jensen’s lips pull down and he inclines his head, considering.

“Sounds reasonable,” he says.

“So you’ll take the job?”

Jensen makes eye contact with Jared. “Send the encrypted dossier. We’ll let you know once we’ve had a look at the fine print.”

 

 

They’re sitting on the bed watching _Diehard With A Vengeance_ when Jensen’s laptop trills its incoming email tone.  Jared glances at the laptop and then switches his focus back to the movie. Jensen gets up and goes across to the desk. He opens the new message and downloads the encrypted file.

“Here,” Jared tosses him a USB stick, which Jensen catches on reflex. “It’s week seven, right?”

Jensen thinks about. “Yeah. What’s that? A third-series, right? A seven digit duplication set-up with normal contractions, transferred numerals, no blanks and the alert phrase ‘if not possible’.”

Jared blinks. “Who cares? Just run the appropriate decryption program.”

Jensen feels himself pouting. “It’s more fun doing it manually,” he mutters.

Jared stares at him and then shakes his head. “You are a whole new level of freak, Mr Winchester.”

“Fuck you,” Jensen says. “I _like_ puzzles.”

Jared snorts. “Yeah, no shit, your Sudoku habit is bankrupting us.”

Jensen glares and Jared holds his hands up in surrender. “Go ahead. Do your thing. I’ll just sit here and watch John McClane blow shit up.”

“Yipee Ki-yay, motherfucker,” Jensen mutters.

Two hours later he pushes back from the desk. “I don’t like it.”

Jared turns to face him. “Why not?”

Jensen scrunches up his nose. “It’s too big. Too noisy. Too much collateral damage.”

Jared’s brow furrows. “What kind of collateral damage are we talking?”

Pellegrino is having a 40th birthday party for his nearest and dearest tomorrow night. The mission outline calls for Jared to go in as part of the catering team and plant a couple of bombs, to be remotely detonated once he’s out.

“So we wait for the caterers to finish up before we detonate,” Jared says. “Or I lock them in the kitchen before I leave or something.”

“And the DJ? And the hookers they’re expecting Pellegrino to bring in to entertain his buddies?”

Jared shrugs and rubs at his jaw. “What are you going to be doing while I’m planting the bombs?”

“I’ll be up on the roof of a nearby building with a long gun making sure that no-one survives. Or at the very least making sure that Pellegrino and Heyerdahl die.”

Jared nods. “That’s more your style. Sheppard was right about this being more my kind of gig than yours.”

Jensen wonders if trying to work together is going to turn out to be a mistake. He isn’t really a team player. He’s more of a solitary hunter, creeping around in the dark; unseen; unheard; a ghost in the night. He doesn’t _like_ support crews. He doesn’t like flashy, headline-grabbing kills. He likes to determine his own entry and exit strategies; to set everything up himself. And speaking of.

“They’re sending Ferris to meet with us,” he tells Jared.

Jared inclines his head. “We _were_ on Honeymoon. Having someone else start the planning makes sense in the circumstances. And it’s not like we brought a cache of weapons with us.”

Jensen bites at his bottom lip and runs a hand across the back on his neck.

Jared’s mouth falls open. “Seriously? You brought weapons?”

“Just two. My Barrett M82 and my favorite sig sauer.”

“How the hell did you get those past airport security?”

“In bits,” Jensen says. “In my electronics repair kit.”

Jared raises his eyebrows. “Let me get this straight. You brought guns on our Honeymoon?”

Jensen rolls his eyes. “I feel naked without my weapons, man. C’mon. You of all people should understand!”

Jared shrugs. “I don’t need to take a weapon everywhere. I like to improvise. Or use my hands.”

“You mean you can’t be bothered to plan, so you make shit up as you go along.”

“I plan,” Jared says. “But I like to be agile; flexible. I’m not a rigid OCD perfectionist like some people.”

Jensen stares at Jared with narrowed eyes. “Like who, Jared?” he says icily.

“Whoa! Pull in the claws, dude. I swear, you’re like an angry kitten sometimes.”

Jensen blinks. An angry kitten? _Really_?

He isn’t one to let people down though; likes to meet or exceed expectations; so Jensen pounces.

Like a kitten.

If kittens were six foot tall, weighed 180 pounds and excelled at unarmed combat and killing people.

Jensen is better at hand-to-hand than Jared, but Jared is stronger. It makes them evenly matched when they wrestle.

Of course, Jared doesn’t believe in fighting fair and it doesn’t take long for him to get one hand around Jensen’s dick and the other down the back of his pants. Pretty soon Jensen is strung out between Jared’s clever fingers and has forgotten what he was so pissed about.  

They’re both lying on their backs, panting and coming down from spectacular orgasms when the room phone rings.

Jensen ignores it, so Jared rolls across him and picks it up.

“Hello?” A pause. “Okay. Thanks.”

Jared puts the phone down and settles himself on top of Jensen. He rolls his hips and Jensen tries to rise to the occasion, but he’s not eighteen anymore.

“Who was it?” he asks.

“Reception. My cousin Ellen is here to see us.”

Jensen raises an eyebrow. “That was fast.”

Jared rolls his hips again. “Well now, Darlin’,” he says, Texan accent in full swing. “You’ve got a bit of a reputation as a sure thing. Everybody knows that if The Firm wants you to put out, you will.”

Just for that Jensen dumps his ass on the floor with extreme prejudice.

 

 

Sam Ferris is waiting for them under a palm leaf beach umbrella with a glass of iced tea in one hand and a blood-red Japanese-style fan in the other. At her feet, is a large rectangular box, wrapped in white-and-silver wedding paper. There’s a big, sparkly silver bow tied around it.

Sam looks cool, calm and comfortable and there isn’t a bead of sweat on her anywhere. In her floral summer dress she looks every inch the delicate southern belle she often pretends to be. The illusion is spoiled for Jensen by the fact that he once watched her nearly decapitate a man with that self-same fan she’s holding now.  

She stands as they draw close and Jensen treats her to a movie star smile.

“Great to see you again, _Ellen_. You’re looking good.”

Sam pulls him in for a hug. “You too. You’ve filled out since Tokyo. I don’t think you’d look anything like as pretty in a kimono these days,” she turns to Jared and hugs him as well. “And you, boy, need to stop growing.”

“I think I finally did. I’m 6ft5 now.”

Sam holds Jared at arm’s length and looks him over carefully. Apparently satisfied with what she sees she takes a step back and her eyes narrow.

“It’s been sixteen minutes since reception called you.”

“Yeah,” Jared shifts uncomfortably. “We were, uh,”

Sam holds up a finger. “I don’t need to know. Hell, y’all are on honeymoon. I don’t _want_ to know. Next time, though, don’t keep me waiting.”

“Yes ma’am,” Jared says.

Jensen merely raises an eyebrow. As far as he’s concerned The Firm came to them, so The Firm can cut them some slack. After all, they _are_ on honeymoon.

Sam drains the rest of her iced tea and then picks up the present. “C’mon, let’s go to your room and I’ll give you your wedding gift.”

Jensen watches Jared’s eyes light up.

While they’re walking back to their room Jensen asks Sam how long she’s been in town and learns that she’s been setting things up in Miami for a couple of weeks.

“We had Misha pencilled in for this one,” she says, “but then something came up in Europe that required his particular skill-set, so,” she shrugs. “It was quite serendipitous that you chose to honeymoon in Miami.”

Jared is thrilled by the gifts that Sam has brought them: two nice large bricks of Semtex, a couple of doctored cell phones and a packet of silver detonator caps.

Jensen bitches about the plan’s collateral damage and Sam shrugs. Pellegrino senior _wants_ flashy. He wants to send a message. He doesn’t care who gets caught in the crossfire.

Jensen complains that it’s unprofessional and makes a lot of pointed comments about working for the mob.

“Are you refusing the job?” Sam asks finally.

Jensen folds his arms and pouts and eventually says no, he’s not refusing it.

“Good. Because we let your old boss Colonel Pileggi, know that Heyerdahl had popped up on our radar as a matter of courtesy and I’ve just received word from the Director of Operations that Pileggi has asked us to bring Heyerdahl in. Can we do it?”

Jensen considers the question. “Before or after the blast?”

“After. We don’t want Pellegrino nervous or he might call off his party.”

“Then…maybe,” Jensen shrugs. “It depends how lethal the blast is.”

Sam nods and tells Jared and Jensen that she’ll leave them to sort out the details.

“Just be aware, Jensen,” she lays a hand on his arm. “There was talk of asking you to interrogate Heyerdahl once he’s brought in.”

Jensen swallows. “I can do that,” he says. “But why? Why not have their own people do it?”

“Time constraints,” Sam says. “Apparently Heyerdahl took some classified data with him when he left and Pileggi wants  it back, along with reassurance that he hasn’t sold it. Time is of the essence and the time it would take to arrange his rendition to Guantanamo Bay for interrogation is considered prohibitive. On American soil, they have to obey the law. You don’t.”

 

 

Jensen whistles long, low and impressed when Jared comes out of the bathroom wearing the white tuxedo.

“Looking sharp there Mr Winchester.”

Jared grins. “Thank God it’s not quite as hot and humid today. I’m still gonna sweat like a pig whenever I’m not inside an airconditioned room though.”

Jensen prowls toward his husband and pulls him in close. “I got plans to make sure you’re hot and sweaty by the end of tonight,” he says.

Jared lowers his head and they kiss; searingly hot and never enough, just like always.

Jared gives Jensen a once over when they pull apart—he’s dressed in light-weight almost-black pants, and a white tee-shirt. He has a handgun strapped to his calf and another one at the small of his back. Later, he’ll exchange the tee-shirt for a plain almost-black Henley, but not until he’s on his chosen roof top, ready to set up his sniper rifle and settle in for the wait.

They do a final equipment check and mission run-through and then it’s time for Jared to go.

“Don’t get dead,” Jensen tells him as he leaves.

“Ditto,” Jared replies.

Jensen lounges around in their room for another hour, listening to Jared making nice with the catering team via his earpiece.

When it’s time for Jensen to head out he picks up his electronic repair toolkit and leaves without a backward glance. Sam is sipping iced tea at a table by the pool and Jensen doesn’t even look her way as he passes by. She’ll have the support team pack up and clean their room, because they won’t be coming back here again.

Jensen sighs. The honeymoon is over and the assassins tango has started.

Jensen makes good time. He parks a little way away so that if some bright spark in the PD figures out that a) there’s a sniper shooting up the Pellegrino residence and b) which roof the sniper is on, his car won’t be trapped inside a police cordon.  The building Jensen has chosen doesn’t have security cameras and the overall security is a joke – the lock on the door to the roof was already broken, even before Jensen scoped out the place. 

There are other security cameras, on other buildings, but Jensen knows where they are and keeps his face angled away. He walks the casual walk of a man who knows where he’s going but is in no real hurry to get there.

Once he’s on the rooftop, Jensen changes into his Henley and sets up his Barrett M82 beside the air conditioning unit. The roof is flat with a chain link fence securing the edges. The muzzle of Jensen’s M82 pokes out through the fence. He sights the Pellegrino mansion though his scope and then settles down to wait. 

Jared keeps him entertained with a stream of chatter as he serves finger food to Pellegrino’s guests, recommending the cheese-n-bacon balls here and the pigs-in-blankets there, and murmuring quiet commentary to Jensen about what he’s seeing in between.

Eventually it’s time and Jared stumbles in the kitchen, arms flailing, and manages to make sure that he ends up covered in curry puffs, soy sauce, ketchup, mustard and wasabi.

“Omigod!” Jared screeches. “I’ve even got ketchup in my hair! MY HAIR!!!”

He’s sent out to the catering van to get a change of clothes and the security guy on the door doesn’t search his backpack, because he’s too busy laughing at Jared. Jensen can’t help laughing as well. No-one does _flustered, flapping, embarrassed klutz_ as well as Jared.

Jared dumps the fresh tuxedo in the bathroom, straps on his guns and then assembles the bombs.

“Mission Red,” Jared murmurs.

“Good luck,” Jensen replies.

He imagines Jared prowling silently through the house, perhaps having to pull back or back track on occasion to avoid party goers or anyone else who might ask him what he’s doing. No doubt he’s got some blabbering excuse lined up about looking for the bathroom and being lost, but he doesn’t have to use it, because less than ten minutes later there’s an audible woosh of breath in Jensen’s earpiece and then Jared is saying.

“Mission accomplished. Give me a sec to get clear.”

There’s a clanging noise and a shout and then a moment later Jared is speaking again.

“Okay, I’ve locked the caterers in the kitchen, I’m out of the tux and into my black camos and I’m fading into the night like a ninja.”

Jensen rolls his eyes.

There’s a long silence and then Jared says, “I’m clear. I’m sending the text now.”

The text is to Heyerdahl from ‘a friend’ warning him that his former Black Ops team is closing in, planning to arrest him. Jared sends the text from a burner and promptly takes the sim card out and smashes it, the moment the text is sent.

“He’s coming out the back door,” Jared says a moment later. “Detonating now.”

Jensen watches as the Pellegrino mansion explodes. A ball of fire rolls up off the building, billowing black smoke and a heartbeat later the rumble-crash of it hits his ears.

“Target acquired,” Jared says. “The blast knocked him off his feet. Taking him to the safe house. Don’t forget, white tux or chef’s outfit equals catering staff.”

Jensen acknowledges.

When the smoke clears, he can see that the back of the mansion, where the kitchen is located, is still standing. There wasn’t anything they could do about the DJ, but he was mob anyway, so Jensen doesn’t feel too bad about him.

Jensen watches as the police, the fire brigade and the EMTs turn up.

He watches the firefighters extinguish the fire. He watches the search and rescue effort. He watches as the catering team are released from the kitchen, checked over by the EMTs and then interviewed by the police. He watches the rescue team bring out body after body from the collapsed part of the building.

A couple of girls in sparkly dresses are brought out on stretchers and taken to the ambulance. Jensen watches them leave. A man in a dark suit is brought out on a stretcher and Jensen takes aim and puts a bullet in the man’s chest. The EMTs drop the stretcher and dive for cover. The cops pull out guns and look around wildly. Jensen sees one of them get on the radio. If he’s smart, he’s calling in air support. Jensen takes that as his signal to pack things up and move out. Maybe there are survivors. Maybe not. Either way, Lucius should be happy with the message they’ve sent. And if by some chance, Pellegrino isn’t dead, Jensen can take him—and anyone else—out quietly later. The way he prefers to do business.

 

 

Jared is sitting in the safe house’s living room with his feet up on the coffee table, a gun on his lap and a beer in his hand.

Christopher Heyerdahl, he tells Jensen, is tied to a metal chair in the cellar.

Jensen lets Jared know that the catering staff all got clear and that he shot one survivor before the cops called for back-up and he left the scene.  They report in to Sam Ferris who tells Jensen that he did the right thing. She confirms that Pellegrino was killed in the blast.

Jensen rolls up his sleeves and heads down to the basement.

There’s a covered trolley at the base of the stairs and Jensen wheels it toward Heyerdahl.

“Heaven,” Heyerdahl croons, “I’m in Heaven. And my heart beats so that I can hardly speak. I seem to find the happiness I seek, when we’re out together dancing cheek-to-cheek.”

Jensen stops in front of his former mentor-lover-torturer. He steps over to the chair Heyerdahl is bound to and checks that he’s properly secured.

He is. Jared knows what he’s doing.

Jensen briskly runs his hands over Heyerdahl, making sure that he doesn’t have anything secreted away on his person that he could use to escape.

Heyerdahl moans obscenely at Jensen’s touch. “Ah Jensen,” he says. “How I’ve missed your cheek against mine. You were always my favorite pupil.”

Satisfied, Jensen steps away. He takes the dark grey tarpaulin off the trolley and folds it; places it on the trolley’s bottom shelf.

Heyerdahl begins to laugh, a sibilant sound that grates against Jensen’s nerves.

“I’m sorry,” Heyerdayl wheezes. “This is a very serious, very emotional moment for you. I shouldn’t laugh. But I mean, are they serious? They sent _you_ to torture _me_?”

Jensen smiles and readies the syringe.

Heyerdahl watches for a moment. “Sodium thiopental?”

Jensen nods.

“You know it’s not reliable, right?”

Jensen shrugs.

“Where have you been anyway?” Heyerdahl asks.

Jensen cocks his head.

“It must’ve been a deep cover op. Like, Yemen, deep,” Heyerdahl muses. “We haven’t crossed paths for years.”

“I went freelance” Jensen says.

Heyerdahl goes very still.

“I was contracted to take out Pellegrino,” Jensen adds. “Running across you was simply a happy coincidence.”

Jensen taps the air bubbles out of the syringe. “Rest assured though, I didn’t save you from the Pellegrino mansion bombing out of the goodness of my heart,” Jensen looks at Heyerdahl and smiles. “A little birdie tells me that you have a copy of the CIA’s European NOC list. I want it.”

“And you can have it,” Heyerdahl says. “For $25 million dollars.”

Jensen shakes his head and injects Heyerdahl with the truth serum. “I’ll be back in half an hour.”

Jensen leaves his tool trolley uncovered to give Heyerdahl something to think about while the sodium thiopental softens him up and makes him feel warm and fuzzy and pleasantly predisposed to chatting with Jensen about anything and everything.

He goes back upstairs to Jared, moves the handgun from Jared’s lap onto the coffee table and climbs onto said lap.

“I got a message back from Misha,” Jared says, as he runs his hands up underneath Jensen’s Henley. “He says the Russian’s weren’t bidding, he thinks because they already have access to our classified records,” Jared pinches Jensen’s nipples and he gasps and arches away from the touch. “Apparently China and Saudi Arabia are interested, but Misha seemed fairly confident that no-one had coughed up a down payment yet,” Jared slips his hands around to Jensen’s back. “What about Heyerdahl? Did he spill his guts?”

“Not yet. I’m letting him simmer for a while.”

“What will we do with the time?” Jared says, his hands sliding down to cup Jensen’s ass.

 

 

Jensen starts things off by reminiscing with Heyerdahl about the good old days. And then he updates him on his move to the private sector, mentions a few of his more impressive jobs like that time he killed the President of Tunisia with a cocktail fork. Heyerdahl is looking paler by the moment.  In the end, Jensen doesn’t even have to get messy. Heyerdahl is blessedly willing to believe that Jensen’s motive here is robbery. That if he gives Jensen the list he’ll get to go free.

Heyerdahl tells Jensen that the thumb drive is stashed in a locker at the interstate bus terminal.

Jensen goes and retrieves it and then opens it on his laptop, but all he gets is gobbledygook.

“That thumb drive’s no damn good to anyone,” he says to Heyerdahl. “It’s encrypted.”

Heyerdahl shrugs. “My plan was to get half the money up front with a promise that they’d get the encryption key when I got the rest of the money.”

“Do you have the key?”

Heyerdahl shakes his head. “A guy with your resources should be able to get it though.”

He’s probably right. Jensen’s pretty good at infiltration and retrieval. He’s just prefers infiltration and assassination.

For good measure, Jensen spends the best part of an hour subjecting Heyerdahl to electric-shock torture, just to be as sure as possible that Heyerdahl hasn’t already sold the data. It’s excruciatingly painful (Jensen knows that from first-hand experience), humiliating (Jensen inserted a thin metal rod in Heyerdahl’s urethra) and Jensen doesn’t stop until Heyerdahl pisses himself and passes out. 

“So what do you think?” Jared asks.

“I think Misha’s intel was accurate. He hasn’t sold the data yet.”

They contact Ferris and she comes and picks up the thumb drive.

Jared makes them French toast and they watch _The Bourne Identity_ on television while they wait for the call.

Eventually, one of the burners rings. Jensen answers it.

“The client’s happy to have their thumb drive back. They don’t care what we do with the source.”

Jensen relays the message to Jared who smiles.

“Can I do it?”

Jensen raises an eyebrow, because Jared is actually bouncing in eager anticipation of killing Heyerdahl.

“I mean,” Jared’s eyes go puppy-dog soft, “unless you want to do it?”

Jensen doesn’t. He’d realised—while he’d been casually frying his former lover—that his anger at the man had well and truly burned out.

Jensen learned a lot about inflicting and withstanding torture from Heyerdahl and for that he’s grateful. Heyerdahl had a hand in making Jensen the man he is today; for a long time he was the yard stick against which Jensen measured himself. Today he’d come to an abrupt understanding that the student now thoroughly surpassed the master and accordingly, Heyerdahl is no longer of any interest to Jensen.

“He’s all yours, sweetheart,” he tells his husband.

Jared cocks his head, his eyes widening.

Jensen’s response is obviously not what he expected to hear.

“Are you sure?” Jared’s eyes have narrowed and he’s watching Jensen closely.

Jensen nods and then waggles his eyebrows. “I don’t want to get blood on my shoes.”

Jared grins. “Fair enough. Do you wanna watch?”

Jensen shakes his head. “I’m gonna go take a shower,” he pauses. “Come up when you’re done.”

Upstairs, Jensen boots up his laptop and then hacks into Mercy Hospital’s clinical care records and tracks down the survivors of the bombing; four women, two men, which means that two of the hookers died. Jensen’s jaw clenches. Further investigation reveals that the two male survivors are low level mob and when he checks in with Ferris, she says their client doesn’t want him to go in and finish them off. Apparently they’re quite badly disfigured and Pellegrino senior thinks their continued presence will send its own message. Jensen pouts a little. He kind of likes dressing up as a doctor and slipping something lethal into a patient’s IV.

Next, Jensen checks Winchester Inc’s bank account and makes sure that their fee for the job has gone in, which it has. A couple of emails later, Mercy Hospital is pleased to learn that a small charitable organization is going to be paying all the medical bills for the four uninsured women who’d been brought in that evening. Next, Jensen arranges for the families of the two dead women to receive anonymous donations of cash, to be delivered to their doorsteps by bike couriers in the morning. 

His administrative tasks taken care of, Jensen strips off and gets into the shower. 

The shower is big, with a large square showerhead that rains down enough water to easily drench two adult men. Jensen luxuriates under the cascading water. He hears Jared’s footsteps and then the soft fabric shoosh of clothes being stripped off.

A moment later, Jared joins him under the spray. Jensen opens his eyes, letting them roam over his naked husband. There’s no blood spatter on him, which surprises Jensen. Jared has been gone a long time; he has to have taken time with the kill.

“Shot him between the eyes from a distance,” Jared says, and then ducks his head sheepishly. “But I played for a while first. With that electric shock thing you had set up. That was fun,” Jared smiles a truly happy smile. “He screamed beautifully for me.”

“The sound proofing in this house is really good,” Jensen says admiringly. “I didn’t hear a thing.”

“Gonna make you scream now,” Jared says and backs Jensen up against the shower wall.

He doesn’t exactly make Jensen _scream_ , but even Jensen has to admit that Jared’s big cock ruthlessly pounding his prostate while his big soapy hand jerks him off just right, certainly makes him _loud_.

 

 

 

Jared is sacked out in bed, on his stomach, arms up under his pillow. Jensen is sitting beside him with his lap top propped up on his knees.

“Seriously?” Jared mutters. “We’ve gotta clear out of here in a couple hours; let the cleaners get in here and get tidied up. You should try to get some rest.”

“Too wired,” Jensen says with a shrug.

Too sore as well, but he’s not going to admit that to Jared. Making things go boom always makes Jared horny and the fact that the rapidly cooling corpse of Jensen’s ex is downstairs seems to have made Jensen’s husband extra possessive and caveman-ish.

Not that Jensen’s complaining.

Not out loud anyway.

He opens the file that he downloaded to his laptop earlier and stares at the gobbledygook on the screen.

“Holy shit! Jared says. “Is that the NOC list?”

Jensen nods absently as he runs through decoder sets in his mind.

“Do you have the decryption code?” Jared asks.

Jensen shakes his head.

“Are we gonna steal it?”

Jensen shakes his head again.

“Huh,” Jared sounds like he’s frowning. “So what…you’re just gonna crack the code?”

“Yep,” Jensen says. He turns to his husband and grins. “It’s gonna be fun!”

“Nerd,” Jared says fondly.

Jensen raises an eyebrow.

“Dangerously lethal nerd who I love with all my heart,” Jared amends.

Jensen smiles and turns back to the code.

Jared snuggles down beside him with a sigh. “At least I probably won’t have to buy you any more of those puzzle books for a while.”

Jensen isn’t really paying attention though. It’s not like he’s going to try to sell the NOC list or anything, not even when he cracks the code and actually knows what it says. Jensen wants the information because knowledge is power, but most of all he wants to crack the code because Dr Badass’s codes are supposed to be uncrackable and Jensen never can resist a challenge like that.

In a few short hours he and Jared will get their shit together and head out. Ferris has organized a flight to Los Angeles for them, but they won’t be taking it. Jensen isn’t comfortable with their employer knowing where they live. Instead, they’ll be taking possession of a beautiful black Impala that Jensen bought in the name of Dean Smith and he and Sam Wesson will be driving cross country to the new ranch house they’ve bought in Texas.   

Jensen looks down at Jared whose breathing is slowly levelling out; not asleep yet, but almost there; and he smiles. He has a new husband, a new home and a new challenge.

Life is good.

 

_The End_


End file.
